Lewis Blackman Case

Medical error is the third leading cause of death in the US, right behind heart disease and cancer. More than 200,000 people die annually as a result of diagnostic mistakes and negligence by healthcare professionals (Washingtonpost, 2016). In the healthcare industry, even the smallest mistakes and oversight could lead to severe consequences for both the patient and professionals. A healthcare professional would be held liable for any discrepancies that causes harm. The following case will analyze the ethical issue and negligence that lead to the death of an elderly woman.

The initial problem with Lewis Blackman's case was that lewis was administered inappropriate medication. First he was given a strong dose of opioid pain medication and on top of that prescribed an adult IV painkiller called Toradol. His medication was being increase even though it was not affecting the patient relieve pain. The nurses fail to diagnose the patient's pain and reevaluate him on his pain status. Followed by that Lewis was having trouble breathing, that is one of the first priorities for a nurse. Yet they assume because he had a history of asthma, him having affected breathing was normal. Therefore, his vital signs, pulse oximeter, were compromised the day after surgery from 90 to 85 which is low. The hospital was not concerned

Candidate Blackmon successfully plotted the current location of the objective. SNC’s five paragraph order was delivered confidently, however he did not properly state the friendly situation. SNC stated that friendly units were northwest of the current location instead of friendly units being one mile north then west along Guadalcanal. Without this information SNC’s brief was inaccurate. Though SNC was confident during his brief, he did not have the attention of his squad as members who were focusing in different directions staring into the trees or cleaning their nails. The squad's lack of attention was ignored by the squad leader. After engaging the enemy SNC was informed that he sustained casualties and the bridge was covered by enemy fire

"Johns Hopkins patient safety experts have calculated that more than 250,000 deaths per year are due to medical error…" (John Hopkins Medicine). This soaring number has caused medical errors to become the third leading cause of death in the United States. For many people, medicine seems foreign and unknown. People who have lost loved ones due to medical error desperately look for a reason, and many times that blame falls upon doctors. Media has put a negative connotation on doctors as well, causing their reputation to plummet whenever a hospital procedure turns badly. A renown surgeon and author, Atul Gawande, uses his knowledge and experience to give people a new perspective on medicine. In the article "When Doctors Make Mistakes," Gawande uses rhetorical appeals: ethos, pathos, and logos to prove the need for a change in the medical systems and procedures. He analyzes how the public looks at doctors, giving a new perspective to enlighten the reader that even the best doctors can make mistakes.

The Lewis Blackman case is an unfortunate case of failure to be ready to deal with unexpected problems, failure to recognize the problem, and failure to respond to the crisis at hand. Clinical warning signs and symptoms were clearly present and even recognized by the healthcare team however, they failed to recognize the significance of the data and correlate it to impending crisis which lead to failure to rescue. There was a presence of understanding the data but a lack of cognitive ability to translate the data into meaningful information to guide decision making efforts. The focus of the team was obviously focused on the fact that the expected and anticipated plan of care for Lewis Blackman only accounted for a favorable outcome

-- Misdiagnosing a patient is very serious, it could lead to consequences. When a doctor's diagnosis error leads to incorrect treatment, delayed treatment, or no treatment at all, a patient's condition can be made much worse, and they may even die.

Atul Gawande in his article “When the Doctor Makes Mistakes” exposes the mystery, uncertainty and fallibility of medicine in true stories that involve real patients. In a society where attorneys protect hospitals and physicians from zealous trials from clients following medical errors, doctors make mistakes is a testimony that Gawande a representative of other doctors speak openly about failures within the medical fields. In this article, Gawande exposes those errors with an intention of showing the entire society and specifically those within the medicine field that when errors are hidden, learning is squelched and those within the system are provided with an opportunity to continue committing the same errors. What you find when you critically analyse Gawande, “When Doctors Make Mistakes essay is how messy and uncertain medicine turns out to be. Throughout the entire article you experience the havoc within the medicine field as the inexperienced doctor misapplies a central line in a patient.

Each year medical errors cause more than 400,000 American deaths and at least 10-20 times that number experience serious harm. Researchers say that is equivalent to “three 747 airplanes crashing each day.” Medical errors rank as the third-leading cause of death in America. Therefore, patient safety is a national concern.

Millions of Americans surrender to conditions that are both preventable and manageable annually. Besides chronic diseases, researchers have identified that the third leading cause of death in America is the errors conducted by professional medical practitioners. While medicine is a highly considered field, some of the practices that contribute to the errors observed include the absence of patient safety, poorly coordinated care, and inefficient healthcare quality improvement. Significant steps that can be taken to reduce deaths caused by medical errors include good communication, cooperation, use of advanced technology and implementation of quality healthcare among

Having an answer regarding a loved one’s death in cases of uncertainty is psychologically beneficial to the family members, especially if they are concerned that the death had occurred because of something they did. If there were any genetic disorders that led to the death, those can be clarified and relayed to the family as well. Clinicians and hospitals benefit from autopsies because they provide reassurance of the diagnoses, treatments and the appropriateness of the medical care received. Society experiences the benefits of autopsies through the evaluation of diagnostic tests, drugs, and diagnostic techniques along with advanced medical knowledge of new diseases as well as environmental, occupational, and existing diseases. Mortality statistics are only able to be verified from autopsy data because so often statistics are inaccurate with the lack of an autopsy (Stöppler,

At this level, medical errors are responsible for claiming 44,000 to 96,000 lives a year. The list is there to prevent and protect patient safety. Common medical errors can be failure to understand how much of a medicine should be taken and

Dr Ilora Finlay, president of the British Medical Association, contends, “Prognoses are notoriously inaccurate. Even the most expert physicians have a 50/50 chance of being wrong over life expectancy of 6 months” (Berry, 2015, p.3). She also states that, “Pathologists tell us postmortem, about 1 in 20 persons are found to have died of something different from the condition they were being treated for” (Berry, 2015, p.3). This argument is widespread because it allows people to remain hopeful that the doctor may have made a misdiagnosis of terminal illness. This argument is not likely to remain very powerful because Oregon’s Death with Dignity Act requires confirmation by a second doctor of a terminal diagnosis of the

As described by Dr. Atul Gawande in his book Complications, medicine “is an imperfect science, an enterprise of constantly changing knowledge… fallible individuals” making medicine different from other scientific fields

And that we will remember the words of the poet, Maya Angelou that people will forget what you did but people will not forget how you made them feel. I hope that all these years of training will help us to think not only like physicians but also like human beings because the practice of Medicine is a challenging but deeply rewarding art with which we can make positive differences in the lives of our patients and their loved

The medicolegal system across the country has been set up with one goal in mind, knowing how and why a person died, and this has to be done in a way that allows no bias, adheres to standards and provides competency. While the general principle remains the same, the variety of this setup across the states leads to certain shortcomings.